Games and Toys

Mousetrap

What a brilliant game that was. The idea was to go round a playing board, and when you landed on specific squares you could add bits to the overall contraption that was called “The Mousetrap”. Once construction had been completed, the objective was to land on a particular square in order to be allowed to launch the mousetrap.

My Mouse Trap is currently up in the loft, so I’m going to have to describe this from memory. It started off by turning a handle, which then caused a boot to kick a bucket, which launched a ball down a zigzag ram and down what I can only describe as a horizontal half-drainpipe, which then eventually struck a plastic rod, which then case a ball to fall through a hoop, which then landed on a seesaw. At the other end of the seesaw was a diver, which launched into the air, landed in a tub. The force of the diver landing then caused the carefully balanced mousetrap to fall down. If your opponent happened to be in a specific place on the playing board where the mousetrap landed you won the game.

Although it was a brilliant game, I think that everyone who owned it only ever actually played the real game once. After that, the appeal of throwing a dice and moving around a board was lost, and the only thing you could do was just to play with the mousetrap itself.

Pure brilliance!

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